Month: April 2010

Publishing Triangle Announced 2010 Awards

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The Publishing Triangle (“the association of lesbians and gay men in publishing”) have just announced their picks for the best LGBT books of 2010.

Winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction: Rebecca Brown, American Romances (City Lights)

Winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry: Stacie Cassarino, Zero at the Bone (New Issues Poetry & Prose)

Check out the rest of the winners and finalists here.

Have you read any of the winners or finalists for the Publishing Triangle Awards? What did you think of them?

Lesbrary Sneak Peek: More books I got in the mail!

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I got a box of books in the mail this week that I’m very excited about. (Thanks Bookmooch!)

This is one of those really specific titles that I always find fascinating. In its defense, this isn’t actually all about lesbian hair (though you probably could write a book about it). It’s a humour book that sounds similar to So You Want to Be a Lesbian?, which I liked despite it being fairly outdated now. The History of Lesbian Hair a slim little book, only a little over 100 pages, so I’ll probably tackle it pretty soon.

As for fiction, I got a well-loved copy of Babyji by Abha Dawesar. It won the 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the 2006 Stonewall Book Award for Fiction, so that’s definitely promising. It’s set in India in the 1980s and has a 16-year-old protagonist with a love for quantum physics who has affairs with three different women while critiquing caste politics. I love reading lesbian books that stray from the usual all-white cast, set in the U.S. norm. Plus, a smart, adventurous heroine? I am completely on board!

And finally, I got Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian Nation edited by Arlene Stein. I’m really interested in knowing more about not just present lesbian culture and politics, but also what has come before. This book explores the fall from the dream of a “Lesbian Nation–a sisterhood with a shared identity, a common agenda” to a more splintered, multi-faceted culture, split along ideas about marriage, butch/femme dynamics, and class differences. It looks fascinating.

Have you read A History of Lesbian Hair, Babyji, or Sisters, Sexperts, Queers? What did you think of it?

Danika reviews This One’s Going to Last Forever by Nairne Holtz

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I wasn’t sure how to sum up This One’s Going to Last Forever, so here’s the blurb:

This One’s Going to Last Forever reflects both the naïve optimism of those who have yet to learn about love — and the cynicism of those who feel that by now they should know better.

Clara, a university student working at the McGill Daily, discovers that in love and politics, commitment is often more imagined than real. Kelly and Sonya share a bond that has less to do with love than with their dependence on each other and a succession of friends who supply them with heroin. A middle-aged man who performs drive-through weddings dressed as Elvis realizes, as he marries his first same-sex couple, that the only domestic partner he is ever likely to have is his ailing father. But when he ends his latest relationship, an unlikely friendship results.

The characters in these darkly comic stories and novella may be searching for love in all the wrong places, but they are also able to find love in the most unexpected places.

Nairne Holtz has a great skill for establishing characters and moods that really stick with you. Each story seems to contain a distinct moment more than a strict plot. Definitely the strongest part of This One’s Going to Last Forever is the characters. My favorite protagonist was Clare of the novella “Are You Committed?” She feels completely clueless compared to everyone around her at McGill: everyone–her roommates, her fellow journalists at the school newspaper, her friends–they all seem to know exactly who they are and what they’re talking about, and she’s still trying to gather enough facts to form an opinion. She doesn’t know what her sexuality is or the difference between the personal and political or what “Silence = Death” means. It makes her relatable.

A few times the book bumps into the gay pronoun problem: if you’re writing about two (or three or more) women, it’s really hard to establish which “she” you’re talking about, to it’s easy to overuse names. Overall, however, the writing is strong.

This One’s Going to Last Forever is a Lambda Literary Awards finalist in Lesbian Fiction. They are a terrific resource for finding quality queer books.

Have you read This One’s Going to Last Forever or another lesbian short story collection? What did you think of it?

Guest Lesbrarian: Emily

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For Once, Being Gay Isn’t the Problem

Most lesbian literature to date, it seems, details the common struggles of coming out and of dealing with the consequences of being a homosexual in a heterosexual world. Not Ash, the new teen novel by former afterellen.com editor Malinda Lo.

A revisionist Cinderella novel complete with pagan holidays and faeries reminiscent of those rampant throughout Irish and British folklore, the novel is indeed a modern fairy tale. Instead of a submissive Cinderella, Ash is a rebellious teenager. Instead of getting wishes from a kind fairy godmother, Ash makes a deal with a dangerous fairy knight. But what at first appears to be the most significant twist, that Cinderella falls in love with a woman, is not. What is truly refreshing about this story is that her falling in love with a woman, not a man, doesn’t bother anybody.

“It was clear to me from the beginning that I didn’t want to have a world where there was homophobia,” said Lo in an interview with afterellen.com’s Heather Aimee O’Neill. “I decided to not make [homosexuality] an unusual thing.”

It’s easy to see, reading her book. Casual references to women loving women are sprinkled here and there throughout the text, and when you read that “a young couple stumbled away from the dance hand in hand, one woman dressed in gold, the other woman in green”, or that one character nonchalantly voices her opinion that Ash, the cinderella character, is one of the “many who would cast themselves as the huntress’s lover”, you begin to understand that in the world of Ash, there is no “gay” or “straight”. There is only love, and the gender of the person you love doesn’t matter.

“She has enough problems,” said Lo, without having to deal with a world discriminatory towards gays. It is the difference in class between Ash and her “true love” that rankles with her society, not the lack of difference in gender. While many factors impede the progress of their relationship, stigma associated with sexual orientation, for once, is not one of them.

Ash really is a fairy tale. A world in which being gay isn’t a problem—doesn’t that sound like happily ever after?

Interview with Malinda Lo, conducted by Afterellen’s Heather Aimee O’Neill on October 15th, 2009: http://www.afterellen.com/people/2009/10/malinda-lo

Lo, Malinda. Ash. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. p. 106

Lo, Malinda. Ash. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. p. 184

Interview with Malinda Lo, conducted by Afterellen’s Heather Aimee O’Neill on October 15th, 2009: http://www.afterellen.com/people/2009/10/malinda-lo

Thanks to Emily from Wacky Word Woman for this excellent guest review! I’ve been wanting to read Ash for a while, and this just moved it up the list. Definitely check out Emily’s blog. It’s new and awesome, but she doesn’t have a lot of followers yet.

Have you read Malinda Lo’s Ash? What did you think of it?

2009 Lesbian Fiction Readers Choice Awards

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I just discovered Lesbian Fiction Readers Choice today, but they have just announced their winners, chosen from 64 books nominated by members. Because they require you to join their Yahoo group to see the choices, I’ll just copy them here.

Have you read any of their picks? What did you think of them?

In other lesbian book awards news, Autostraddle has a post about which Lambda Literary Awards 2010 nominees they’re most looking forward to called: 12 Queer Books You’ll Love.

Continue Reading →

Do we need a Happily Ever After?

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Kissed by Venus has an interesting post about the over-representation of the romance genre in lesbian fiction, and about the domination of the Happily Ever After ending in lesbian fiction.

What do you look for in lesbian fiction? Do you need a happy ending?

What makes something a lesbian book? How much lesbian content does it need?

Is there something to be said for happy endings when not long ago all queer books were required to end unhappily?

Danika reviews Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey

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Love as thou wilt.

Such is the precept of Elua, the most important deity of Terre d’Ange, where Kushiel’s Dart takes place. If that sounds like the perfect commandment for a queer novel, it pretty much is.

Kushiel’s Dart is the first of a trio of trilogies based in the same world, though only the first trilogy feature Kushiel’s Dart‘s protagonist, Phèdre. If I could describe Kushiel’s Dart in only two words, it would be sex and politics, but religion would be a close third.

This is a 900 page book, which makes it pretty much impossible to discuss without some spoilers, but I’ll keep them to the first 100 pages or so. This is the story of Phèdre, sold as a young child to a… well, it’s tempting to say brothel, but in this world being a sex worker is being a Servant of Naamah, a semi-spiritual, respectable life. After all, love as thou wilt. Anyway, Phèdre goes on to become a pupil of an intellectual, taught to listen and spy while exercising her unique talents as (minor spoiler) an anguissette: the rare trait of experiencing pleasure in pain. As such, Kushiel’s Dart has graphic, but tasteful, I think, descriptions of sex, including sadomasochism.

The first half of the novel builds slowly, with Phèdre reporting to Delauney, her tutor, the things she learns through being an anguissette. Personally, I found it difficult to follow all the names and politics, but I have a terrible head for that. It didn’t stop me from enjoying it, though. The second half is more fast-paced, with greater stakes. It includes conspiracy, love stories, and quite a bit of travel.

Phèdre may have the most involved relationships with men during the course of the novel, but she takes both male and female clients, like most Servants of Naamah, and perhaps the most erotic relationship Phèdre has is with a woman.

I’m sorry this review seems little jumbled. I liked Kushiel’s Dart, but it was definitely a thorough world-building, one that lost me few times, since I couldn’t always keep track of the names or politics. I won’t be picking up the next one, but I definitely enjoyed Kushiel’s Dart and I’m hoping to eventually re-read it.

 

Have you read Kushiel’s Dart or another lesbian/bi women/women-loving-women Fantasy novel? What did you think of it?

Lesbrary Review: The Guide to Lesbian Sex by Jude Schell

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I just wanted to start off this post to say that, believe it or not, I got this book from my local library. Yes, my library is awesome. Anyways, on to the book review.

If you’re looking for a practical how-to guide to lesbian sex, this isn’t it. The Guide to Lesbian Sex is mostly dominated by pictures. Some of them are quite artistic and/or erotic, but a lot of them have weird added textures from a photo-editing program that are really just distracting, and the same couple models are repeated, meaning you see them a couple dozen times in very similar positions, which gets repetitive.

As for the actual content, it doesn’t go into much depth. Most of it is just introducing sexual concepts and uses a tone that’s an odd mix of scientific and sexual, like the introduction to the “Lick” section (the book is divided into sections like Flirt, Lick, Desire, etc, each only a page or a couple of pages):

To lick is to pass our tongue along a surface. The tongue is a large bundle of muscles covered with thousands of highly sensitive taste buds and papillae capable of inducing our sexual appetite and enhancing sexual pleasure. It’s versatile, pliable, moist, and an ideal texture for sex.

Some of the little facts she shares are fairly interesting, like where the word flirt comes from, and some of the sexual tips are good, but there’s not enough depth (it’s only about 200 pages, most of which are pictures) to really offer much in that respect, plus it seems to veer from the very specific to the very general in focus.

Overall, The Guide to Lesbian Sex was an interesting enough read to pass the time and to look at the pictures (at least the ones that aren’t strangely altered), but it didn’t have a lot of practical advice.

Although Girl Meets Girl by Diana Cage isn’t exclusively a sex book, I thought its sex section was pretty helpful. Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World is a bit old, I don’t think it’s outdated; it still is pretty open-minded, even by today’s standards. I’ve just put the other lesbian sex guide at the library (yes, there are two) on hold: The Whole Lesbian Sex Book by Felice Newman, which I’m looking forward to.

Have you read The Guide to Lesbian Sex or another lesbian sex book? What did you think of it?

Lesbrary Links: Amazon Listmania!

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I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been trying to add to the links in the sidebar ever since I started the Lesbrary. It’s all well and good for me and guest lesbrarians to tell you what to read, but you probably want to go out and find the kind of books you’re interested in.

Originally, I was just putting all the links under “Blogroll”, but that was getting too big to handle, so I separated them out into Book Blogs and Websites (websites that are specifically devoted to books that have lesbrary books), Bookstores (either lesbian/queer bookstores or bookstores that have significant lesbian/queer sections), E-Books, General Blogs and Websites (websites that don’t have books as a main source, but have a significant lesbian/queer section), Lists (with emphasis on lesbian/bi women/women-loving-women lists over general queer lists that mix everything together), and Publishers (either lesbian/queer publishers or publishers that have significant lesbian/queer sections).

I think I’ve got a pretty good selection of resources built up now that I haven’t seen collected anywhere else, but I wanted to go through them individually and spotlight them, hopefully gathering more resources and culling the less helpful ones as I go.

I thought I’d start with Lists, because I think that’s how most of us start when we first started looking for woman/woman romances, looking up lists of what people thought were the best ones and working from there. Starting alphabetically, today I’m spotlighting Amazon’s Listmania!.

Category: Links

Title: Amazon “Lesbian Fiction” Listmania

Summary: I think everyone knows what Amazon is: a large (that’s a bit of an understatement) online bookseller. They have a feature called Listmania! that allows users to create lists of products, mostly books and movies. I’ve linked to “lesbian fiction” Listmania!s in the sidebar because that comes up with mostly lesbrary books, but you can use any query to bring up lists, and there are also Amazon Guides (“So You’d Like to…”), which are very similar.

Advantages: The greatest advantage to Amazon Listmania! is numbers. Searching “lesbian” will give you almost 1400 results. This allows you not only a lot to pick from, but also the ability, at least in theory, to put in more narrow search terms, like “black lesbian fiction” or “lesbian sci fi”. Notice I said in theory, because I can only find one Listmania! with “bi women” in the title, and only one for  “trans fiction”, though there are some general GLBT ones.

Disadvantages: As a disclaimer, I’m not a big fan of Amazon, to be honest: I would much rather support my local bookstore. Still, I included it in the Lists category because of the sheer number of lists. Even that, however, has its downsides.  The lists aren’t guaranteed by anyone; they’re just random people’s opinions, so there’s no guarantee of quality. I also found them pretty difficult to navigate: while looking up “trans fiction”, “More Books About The Russo-Japanese War” was the second list, while “Transgender Literature” was on the third page, right under “Great Nebraska Books”.

Have you used Amazon Listmania? What did you think of it?

Do you have any resources you think should be added to the Lesbrary?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go look through this “Contemporary Punk Lesbian/Queer Lit” Listmania…